Remember that weird meeting on the tarmac in Phoenix between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton? We do. Most recently Kim wrote about Bill and Loretta’s excellent adventure here. Well now, according to newly released transcripts of Lynch’s Congressional testimony, we find out that Loretta Lynch is calling James Comey a liar. 

“Transcripts of closed-door interviews with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and others were released Monday evening.

Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, entered into the Congressional Record the final nine transcripts from the Judiciary Committee’s investigation with the House Oversight Committee into potential bias in the Justice Department and the FBI.

“The American people deserve transparency,” Collins said in a statement Monday. “They deserve to know what transpired in the highest levels of the FBI at the origin of the probe of President Trump’s campaign.””

And boy howdy, there is some definite transparency going on! Remember how it was reported that Comey instructed Loretta Lynch to call the MidYear Exam a ‘matter’ instead of an investigation? Well, it seems that Loretta disagreed with that. Per her testimony:

Loretta Lynch DENIES telling Comey to refer to the Clinton email case as a "matter," rather than an investigation, directly contradicting statements made by Comey. SOMEONE IS LYING. pic.twitter.com/qb0U4Jopp3

— Cory Groshek (@CoryGroshek) May 20, 2019

The entire transcript can be found here, and the rest of the transcripts here.

And yes, someone is lying. Which one? At this juncture, I’d say both are lying and working hard to cover their asses.

Way back when, Morning Joe found the tarmac meeting to be very inappropriate and wondered how mad it was making Obama that Bill Clinton dropped yet another scandal into his lap.

This is what Comey testified to under oath in June 2017:

“The attorney general had directed me not to call it an investigation, but instead to call it a matter, which confused me and concerned me,” Comey testified. “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude, ‘I have to step away from the department if we’re to close this case credibly.’”

Comey continued: “The Clinton campaign, at the time, was using all kind of euphemisms — security review, matters, things like that, for what was going on. We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to have to testify and talk publicly about. And I wanted to know, was she going to authorize us to confirm we had an investigation? … And she said, ‘Yes, but don’t call it that, call it a matter.’ And I said, ‘Why would I do that?’ And she said, ‘Just call it a matter.’”

When pressed about Comey’s testimony, Lynch offered up this word salad. 

“”So in the meeting with the Director, which was, again, around September — I don’t recall the date — of 2015, it was very early in the investigation, I expressed the view that it was, in my opinion, too early for us to confirm that we had an investigation,” Lynch said. ” At some point in the course of investigations, as you all know from your oversight, it becomes such common knowledge that we talk about it using the language of investigation and things, but at that point we had not done that and we were not confirming or denying it. We weren’t denying it at all. There was, just essentially, in my view, we were following the policy. And when the Director asked me about my thoughts, I said, yes, we had to be — we had to be completely cooperative and fulsome with Congress for both of us, and that we needed to provide as much information as we could on the issue of resources.””

First of all, I’m laughing at the fact that Lynch actually states that the DOJ would be ‘cooperative and fulsome with Congress’ given all the players involved in the investigation. Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Brennan, Comey, Lynch and more.

Secondly, when you read her above word salad again, one realizes that she never quite answered the question.

Third, she testified that no one in the FBI or DOJ ever investigated the Trump campaign.

Lynch is screwed…(pg. 52) pic.twitter.com/Bw2ffmGTcI

— M3thods (@M2Madness) May 20, 2019

Keep in mind her testimony wasn’t under oath and now public emails and transcripts shed a very different light on her statement.

Loretta Lynch was quite likely hoping all of this will go away. But now that the transcripts have been released, she has a problem. Calling James Comey a liar is just the tip of the iceberg.

Feature Photo Credit: US Department of Labor – L-16-06-24-A-020 photo via commons.wikimedia.org, cropped and modified